Quote - The way people smile is different (but not too much, if it's a real smile). The way jaw, facial muscles, etc. work is the same. And the way the uniqueness of the character fades with emotional facial expression applied is actually right. That's how it works in real life, too.

However, as a separate point, custom morphs can affect how basic facial expressions work. That's the problem with morphs in general (or blend shapes or shape keys or whatever they call it) in any 3d package - they can conflict with each other.

That's certainly true. I use ZBrush to do custom sculpting on Daz figures like V4/M4 and if you get a character you want, regardless of it looking like a real life person, facial expressions MUST be tweaked.

If you buy a general expression package like from here and then try them on a custom morphed V4 figure, most likely you will need to do some tweaking at the very least. Typically bought expressions are not meant to work with meshes that have been altered in programs like ZB. That is why I usually end up doing facial expressions by hand because if you use those created by others they simply do not work as well and tend to be too strong.

Now, just as in real life, if a person smiles big, laughs big, etc. their face will be distorted because it is not in a general neutral position.

Jeff

Development on: Mac Pro 2008, Duel-Boot OS - Snow Leopard 10.6.6 & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon , 10GB 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.